23-04-2024 03:21 PM Jerusalem Timing

France’s Syria Strikes ’May Have Killed French Jihadists’

France’s Syria Strikes ’May Have Killed French Jihadists’

French air strikes in Syria may have killed French jihadists, a source close to Prime Minister Manuel Valls said Monday, although the defense ministry said the information could not yet be confirmed.

French air strikes in Syria may have killed French jihadists, a source close to Prime Minister Manuel Valls said Monday, although the defense ministry said the information could not yet be confirmed.

The strikes Thursday night targeted a training camp for Takfiri group, ISIL (so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Levant) in the conflict-torn country -- the second time that French jets have targeted ISIL camps in Syria.

"The strikes have killed jihadists. There might well be French jihadists among them," said the source in Valls's delegation during a visit to Jordan as part of a Middle East tour.

"A figure of six dead was announced, probably by a Syrian non-governmental organization," he said.

The defense ministry acknowledged Monday that French citizens or French speakers may have been among those killed in the camp, which reportedly lies five kilometers (three miles) southwest of Raqa, the Syrian town widely considered to be ISIL's center of power.

But the ministry added it could not "confirm with accuracy anything related to this bombing."

"We know that this camp aimed to train fighters to come and attack Europe and France," the ministry told AFP.

Valls himself did not confirm any French deaths.

"Our responsibility is to strike Daesh and we will continue to do so regardless of their nationalities," he said in the Jordanian capital Amman, using an Arabic acronym for ISIL.

"The terrorists, from that point of view, don't have passports."

Valls denied however that there had been any "bungling" in the apparently different accounts.